The Editorial By Scot Rhoads Yet Another Brand New Ancient Discovery I've been reading again (uh oh!), this time on Chaos science. I love it! I find it a real paradigm shifter. Chaos deals with nonlinear systems—the kind that scientists with pencil and abacus have until now assumed they could adequately approximate with linear descriptions. Haha! Well, now they're learning different. Now they're learning things that we ignorant superstitious pagans always knew—such as in the Gaia hypothesis. And I am learning new ways of looking at many things, for instance: On occasion I hear that metaphysics is a bunch of crap and those involved with it are credulous or exploitive. I never deny that such people exist, but I feel it is also credulous to believe that this indictment explains anything about metaphysics. The problem that leads to such bigoted conclusions and makes them so difficult to heal is the linear nature of our language and society. We reason and talk linearly, so it is easy for us to feel that the whole universe must be linear. That is a foundation of the present Western paradigms, both religious (which doesn't work very well) and scientific (which does). Fortunately, science is a powerful enough tool to show the falsehood of this foundation (those hung up on linear religion seem to be on their own). Chaos science describes nonlinear events in linear terms (making it seem very weird). The beauty of this is that we can now admit that nonlinearity exists and is impossible to fully describe in linear terms for all practical purposes. Once we free ourselves from our self-made prison of linearity, we can see it is an illusion that we impose on a (tiny?) subset of experience in order to manipulate it in our limited minds. Certainly linear thinking is a powerful tool—the only mistake is to think that it is more than a tool to think that it is real. When we abandon our need for reality we find our awareness opens to many new ideas and experiences. (We also find that the fear of losing what we have is unfounded.) I have read that sheep cannot perceive a gate in a fence if it opens on a corner, and horses cannot think to go around a short length fence when they want to get to the other side. It sounds stupid, but that is an inappropriate assessment. Millions of years of an environment free of fences did not select for fence processing. The story of Magellan and the natives of Tierra del Fuego illustrates the human version of this: The natives could not perceive Magellan's large sailing ships because sails and large vessels were so far outside their experience. The ships were invisible to the natives until, with effort, their shaman perceived the ships and described them to the others in terms his people could understand. Suppose we could talk to a poor sheep, wondering desperately how we could so freely move from the inside of a pen to the outside without the benefit of an observable gate. The explanation there is a gate in the corner would be nonsense. It would be like saying I moved through the fence. And yet, it would be accurate. When we encounter experiences that are beyond our ability to process, the only explanation that we can communicate in linear terms must be nonsense. But that does not make it meaningless! In metaphysics and religion, we encounter such absurdities everywhere (much like quantum physics). The message is: we are dealing with a nonlinear topic. When we interpret nonlinear communication in linear terms, we get garbage. (Though we can often analyze nonlinear information in linear terms—read Joseph Campbell.) Fortunately, we don't have to interpret. Though linearity is the anointed mode of thought for our civilization, we needn't be a slave to it. We do think nonlinearly (we can't avoid it) and when we embrace this instead of hide it, we can live our lives more fully. Paganism is nonlinear and so is magick (though it's often organized in very linear terms). The metaphors and rituals that we work with are rooted in our ancestor's ways of working with the nonlinear side. Certainly they are absurd if we take them literally (linearly), otherwise they could not do their job. I expect that on some level, each of us must have learned this lesson to be involved in metaphysics. The next challenge is to learn how to teach our society not to hate and fear nonlinear thinking, for those feelings make it so much harder to accept such things as metaphysics, even when we desperately need them. This article is an example of linear communication. Now I'll put the message in nonlinear terms: We need to return to the Goddess. That says the same thing, and (as is the nature of nonlinarity) much more. Blessed Be | 
